Global Ethics and Nanotechnology: A Comparison of the Nanoethics Environments of the EU and China

The following article offers a brief overview of current nanotechnology policy, regulation and ethics in Europe and The People’s Republic of China with the intent of noting (dis)similarities in approach, before focusing on the involvement of the public in science and technology policy (i.e. participatory Technology Assessment). The conclusions of this article are, that (a) in terms of nanosafety as expressed through policy and regulation, China PR and the EU have similar approaches towards, and concerns about, nanotoxicity—the official debate on benefits and risks is not markedly different in the two regions; (b) that there is a similar economic drive behind both regions’ approach to nanodevelopment, the difference being the degree of public concern admitted; and (c) participation in decision-making is fundamentally different in the two regions. Thus in China PR, the focus is on the responsibility of the scientist; in the EU, it is about government accountability to the public. The formulation of a Code of Conduct for scientists in both regions (China PR’s predicted for 2012) reveals both similarity and difference in approach to nanotechnology development. This may change, since individual responsibility alone cannot guide S&T development, and as public participation is increasingly seen globally as integral to governmental decision-making

An interpretive approach to digital divide policy-making: a comparative study of China and Taiwan

An interpretive approach to digital divide Policy-making: A comparative study of China and TaiwanThis thesis investigates how problems for policy become defined as well as how policy responses are subsequently designed to address these problems. It was motivated by the substantive concern that existing literature on digital divide policy is derived from Western countries, and embedded within Western rationales. In contrast, the way in which digital divide policy is made in developing countries had received relatively little attention. In light of this gap in the literature, empirical research was carried out on the development of digital divide policy-making, highlighting policies from two developing countries as examples: Cun Cun Tong (providing every village with a telephone and internet connection) Policy in China and Digital Opportuniry Centre/APEC Digital Opportunity Centre in Taiwan.Theoretically, this research adopts an interdisciplinary rationale, combining an interpretative approach from the field of policy research and key concepts from Science and Technology Studies. It aims to overcome a shortcoming of much traditional research on the digital divide which, in its commitment to its substantive concerns has been un-reflexive in its approach. This thesis demonstrates how an interpretative approach can produce new insights into digital divide policy from a more critical perspective. It elucidates how understandings of the digital divide are articulated (initially in discussions in the USA and the European Union) and become promulgated through international organizations during the early 1990s to the year 2005, and how they are then ultimately 'domesticated', becoming embedded within particular national contexts and policy discourses.Methodologically, this research adopts a strategy of triangulation. It combines various modes and methods of enquiry: discourse analysis of policy documents is supplemented with interviewing policy-makers. Interviews are used to obtain first-hand materials which throw light on the orientation and context of the various actors who participate in policy-making and their concerns/discourses during policy-making. Finally, there is an analysis of policy outcomes. This research also contributes to opening the black box of policy-making, particularly in China, a context which presents particular challenges for the researcher.Empirically, the findings provide an in-depth understanding of digital divide policy-making in developing countries. Firstly, it is demonstrated that international and national contexts matter in digital divide policy-making. Policy similarities can be explained by both the international context and local context. International policy discourses provide commonly available intellectual resources, whereas similarities in local contexts, for example a shared technocratic tradition. These international and national contexts also impact on the participants who are involved in digital divide policy-making, for example, the technocratic tradition of China and Taiwan is a factor underpinning the choice of policy participants with science and technology backgrounds. These participants then learn and exchange experiences from international organisations and other countries through international conferences, official policy websites, and personal contacts. Secondly, the study found that the relationship between discourses and policy-making is by no means as straightforward and linear as some interpretations of discursive shaping might imply. Discourses may have influences on policy development; however some inclusion strategies arose within domestic departments in advance of alignment with international digital divide discourses, as a result of pre-existing concerns within the national policy settings. A third, and related finding is that there is a gap between policy formation and policy implementation, the exploration of which reveals the complexity of policy discourses. For example, some policy texts were found to emphasise social development, whereas the implementation predominantly centres on the equipment of infrastructures. Finally, the most crucial contribution of this thesis is its development of an interdisciplinary interpretive approach to scrutinise digital divide policy. This provides a basis for future research in this area, as well as a means to address the limitations of existing approaches

Toward Intergenerational Ethnography: Kinship, Cohorts, and Environments in and Beyond the Biosocial Sciences

Situated alongside and drawing from emerging inquiry, debate, and reflection about making and unmaking kin at a moment of critical reflection on racial, social, and reproductive inequities and changing environments, this special edition considers how anthropology can ethnographically examine and engage with intergenerational dynamics as they influence different scales and spheres of life. It brings together medical anthropologists and science and technology scholars conducting research in Bangladesh, China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States as they reflect on the un/making of kin in settings of expert knowledge production and dissemination, including practices of seed collecting, epigenetic science, birth cohort studies, social policy generation, and clinical trials. Contributors to this special issue consider how intergenerational relations and modes of transmission take form in and through biosocial research-both as an object of study and a method of analysis. [intergenerational, environmental change, kinship, biosocial]

Interdisciplinary Research as Collective Interaction: An Investigation of Interdisciplinarity in the R&D Sector of China’s Biotechnology Industry

As China has celebrated its economic boom over the past decades, scientific research within the R&D sector of industry has become an active arena for Science and Technology Studies (STS) in understanding how science contributes to social change in China. Two themes are central in this sociological work: the study of secular change in China, in particular, change in its biotech industries exemplified by work in the BGI (formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute); the investigation of interdisciplinarity in that context. This research sheds new light on explanatory practice in interdisciplinary research (IDR) strategy as patterns of interaction in the social process of scientific knowledge production, and its contribution also includes bridging the sociology of scientific knowledge production and research policy studies. In this thesis, I examine a number of topics at three interrelated levels of analysis. First, it explores the theoretical development of the academic discipline and the notion of interdisciplinarity, with a focus on the balance of normative and descriptive approaches in understanding their social functionality as embodied by what I name as Paradiscipline (the initial stage of IDR project). The second level investigates closely how IDR patterns emerge and evolve in the sequencing-based industrial R&D practice in the case of the BGI. Social, cultural, and institutional factors directing and conditioning collective actions by status groups within interaction network are carefully weighed against the context that scientific expertise speak to power in China's social setting. The last level is dedicated to yield more pervasive implications including the organizational structure of interaction and modelling of scientific research, via comparative analysis of traditional S&T management and governing 'Big Science'. It further addresses the issues around on-site governance of China's biotechnology industry R&D, at both management practice and policy making levels, on the basis of social embedment.Exeter Research Scholarshi

Introduction to the Special Section on Reputation in Agent Societies

This special section includes papers from the 'Reputation in Agent Societies' workshop held as part of 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) and Web Intelligence (WI'04), September 20, 2004 in Beijing, China. The purpose of this workshop was to promote multidisciplinary collaboration for Reputation Systems modeling and implementation. Reputation is increasingly at the centre of attention in many fields of science and domains of application, including economics, organisations science, policy-making, (e-)governance, cultural evolution, social dilemmas, socio-dynamics, innofusion, etc. However, the result of all this attention is a great number of ad hoc models and little integration of instruments for the implementation, management and optimisation of reputation. On the one hand, entrepreneurs and administrators manage corporate and firm reputation without contributing to or accessing a solid, general and integrated body of scientific knowledge on the subject matter. On the other hand, software designers believe they can design and implement online reputation reporting systems without investigating what the properties, requirements and dynamics of reputation in natural societies are and why it evolved. We promoted the workshop and this special section with the hope of setting the first steps in the direction of a new, cross-disciplinary approach to reputation, accounting for the social cognitive mechanisms and processes that support it and working towards t a consensus on essential guidelines for designing or shaping reputation technologies.Reputation, Agent Systems

From Tin to Pewter: Craft and Statecraft in China, 1700-1844

This dissertation examines the transmissions of technology and changes in the culture of statecraft by tracing the itinerary of tin from ore in mines to everyday objects. From the eighteenth century, with the expansion of the Qing empire and global trade, miners migrated from the east coast of China to the southwest frontiers of the Qing empire (1644-1912) and into Southeast Asia, bringing their mining technology with them. The tin from Southeast Asia, in return, inspired Chinese pewter artisans to invent new styles and techniques of metalworking. Furthermore, the knowledge of mining, metalworking, and trade was transferred from miners, artisans, and merchants into the knowledge system of scholar-officials, gradually changing the culture of statecraft in the Qing dynasty. This dissertation explores how imperial expansion and the intensive material exchange brought by global trade affected knowledge production and transmission, gradually changing the culture of statecraft in China. In the Qing dynasty, people used tin, the component of two common alloys, pewter and bronze, to produce objects of daily use as well as copper coins. Thus, tin was not only important to people’s everyday lives, but also to the policy-making of the Qing state. In this way, tin offers an exceptional opportunity to investigate artisans and intellectuals’ approach to technology, while it also provides a vantage point from which to examine how Qing bureaucrats managed the world, a world of human and non-human resources. My dissertation stands at the intersection of the history of science and technology, art history, intellectual history, and the history of global trade. It broadens the scope of the history of science in China by demonstrating how artisans’ practice was crucial to the production of mining treatises. It contributes to the study of science, technology, and society by showing that the transmission of and innovations in technology should be situated in the context of social, cultural, trade, and ecological networks. Finally, I argue that mid-Qing scholars’ efforts to collect practical knowledge changed the culture of governance from Confucian moral didacticism to technocratic epistemology. Qing bureaucrats, Manchu and Han alike, utilized practical knowledge from artisans and merchants in their policy-making process. By emphasizing the entanglement of technology and statecraft, my project contributes to intellectual history and enhances our understanding of the logic of bureaucracy of the Qing empire. My dissertation consists of five chapters. Each chapter uses different methodologies and covers different geographical regions. Chapter One engages with the history of science by demonstrating how scholars translated and codified miners’ vernacular knowledge of mining into mining treatises. Chapter Two examines the semi-autonomous mining community in Yunnan to illustrate that the social organization of miners, which I define as the “social technology” of mining, contributed to the formation of the capital- and labor- intensive mining industry. Chapter Three moves to the island of Bangka (in present-day Indonesia) and focuses on the transmission of mining technology from China to Southeast Asia. Through comparison, I show that the miners in Yunnan and Bangka formed similar (semi-)autonomous social organizations. I argue that it was this social technology that enabled the transmission of Chinese mining technology across geographical regions and laid the foundation for the Chinese dominance of the mining industry in Bangka. The cases of Chinese mining technology in Yunnan and Bangka challenge the modern understanding of technology by showing that technology was not just about tools and machines. Before the 1850s, both Qing bureaucrats and European colonizers considered the social organization of mining to be critical to technological progress. Chapter Four moves back to China to study the formation of Guangdong style pewter. Utilizing visual and material sources, I examine how the introduction of tin from Southeast Asia led to innovations in metallurgy, and how European silver and porcelain inspired stylistic changes. I argue that technology and innovations should be understood in the context of social, economic, material and ecological networks. The final chapter moves to Beijing and Jiangnan area to engage with the institutional history of the Qing empire. Through a case study of monetary reform undertaken in 1740, this chapter reveals that Qing bureaucrats acquired and applied practical expertise to their administrative work. Through their close interactions with artisans and merchants, Qing bureaucrats developed a distinctive vision of statecraft (jingshi). Before the late nineteenth century, the sovereignty of the Qing state was not exercised in the extraction and monopoly over natural resources. Instead, the Qing state relied on the market to acquire most of the natural resources they needed. By focusing on tin, this dissertation shows that the Qing state exercised its political power through material production and paid more attention to the management of skilled labor, capital, and the proper allocation of human and non-human resources

The Eurozone crisis’ impact: a de-Europeanization of Greek and Portuguese foreign policies?

This article compares the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the foreign policies of Greece and Portugal from a de-Europeanization perspective. These two Southern European countries were significantly Europeanized in the past and both suffered greatly from the Euro crisis. Focusing on the Troika period and on relations with China, the article shows that both Greece and Portugal’s foreign policies towards Beijing went through an important degree of de-Europeanization during the Eurozone crisis. Such effect was, however, more intense and durable in the case of Greece, much driven by domestic politics. These national factors were intimately connected with exogenous drivers, such as EU-level developments and Beijing’s agency, both more relevant for illuminating the case of Portugal. Ultimately, the Eurozone crisis strengthened the influence of external actors like China over EU foreign policy-making, working as a complementary driver of de-Europeanization.This article is based upon work from COST-Action ENTER (CA17119), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). António Raimundo´s contribution was also supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under Grant SFRH/BPD/99579/2014

The Prospects for Coal-To-Liquid Conversion: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).We investigate the economics of coal-to-liquid (CTL) conversion, a polygeneration technology that produces liquid fuels, chemicals, and electricity by coal gasification and Fischer-Tropsch process. CTL is more expensive than extant technologies when producing the same bundle of output. In addition, the significant carbon footprint of CTL may raise environmental concerns. However, as petroleum prices rise, this technology becomes more attractive especially in coal-abundant countries such as the U.S. and China. Furthermore, including a carbon capture and storage (CCS) option could greatly reduce its CO2 emissions at an added cost. To assess the prospects for CTL, we incorporate the engineering data for CTL from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) into the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, a computable general equilibrium model of the global economy. Based on DOE's plant design that focuses mainly on liquid fuels production, we find that without climate policy, CTL has the potential to account for up to a third of the global liquid fuels supply by 2050 and at that level would supply about 4.6% of global electricity demand. A tight global climate policy, on the other hand, severely limits the potential role of the CTL even with the CCS option, especially if low-carbon biofuels are available. Under such a policy, world demand for petroleum products is greatly reduced, depletion of conventional petroleum is slowed, and so the price increase in crude oil is less, making CTL much less competitive.BP-MIT Conversion Research Project. U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and by a consortium of industry and foundation sponsors

Políticas públicas de inovação comparadas : Brasil e China (1990-2010)

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Centro de Estudos Avançados Multidisciplinares, 2013.A presente dissertação tem por objetivo realizar um estudo comparado dos elementos centrais das Políticas Públicas de inovação de Brasil e China no período 1990-2010. O período das duas décadas em análise corresponde, em ambos os países, aos períodos de transformação das políticas públicas de ciência e tecnologia em políticas públicas de inovação. Busca-se conceituar inovação, sistemas de inovação e políticas públicas de inovação; realizar o estudo dos elementos centrais das políticas públicas de inovação no Brasil; realizar o estudo dos elementos centrais das políticas públicas de inovação na China; comparar as políticas públicas de inovação de Brasil e China no período 1990-2010; identificar elementos das políticas públicas de inovação da China que contribuir para o sucesso dessas políticas no Brasil. Com esse estudo, espera-se responder aos seguintes questionamentos que compõem o problema de pesquisa: Quais são os atores governamentais que têm sido responsáveis pelas políticas públicas de inovação, em nível nacional, tanto no Brasil quanto na China? Quais organizações podem ser consideradas os participantes mais importantes no processo de formulação das políticas públicas de inovação nos dois países? Em que extensão Brasil e China desenvolveram suas políticas de inovação? Em que área das políticas públicas de inovação esses países se saíram bem e quais seus principais desafios para o futuro? Trabalha-se com duas hipóteses básicas: (1) a centralidade no processo de tomada de decisão chinês gerou melhor eficácia das políticas públicas de inovação na China; e (2) o Brasil possui políticas públicas fragmentadas como resultado da falta de centralidade no processo de tomada de decisões estratégicas. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ABSTRACTThis dissertation aims to conduct a comparative study of the central elements of the Innovation Policy in Brazil and China in the period 1990-2010. The period of two decades under analysis corresponds, in both countries, to the periods of transformation of public policies on science and technology in public policy of innovation. Seeks to conceptualize innovation, innovation systems and innovation policies; conduct the study of the core elements of public policy innovation in Brazil; conduct the study of the core elements of public policy innovation in China; compares public policies for innovation in Brazil and China in the period 1990-2010, to identify elements of innovation policy of China that contribute to the success of these policies in Brazil. With this study, it is expected to answer the following questions that comprise the research question: What are the government actors who have been responsible for public policy innovation at the national level, both in Brazil and in China? Which organizations can be considered the most important participants in the formulation of public policy innovation in the two countries? To what extent Brazil and China have developed their innovation policies? In what area of public policy innovation these countries did well and what their main challenges for the future? Works with two basic assumptions: (1) the centrality of the process of decision-making Chinese produced a better effectiveness of public innovation policies in China, and (2) Brazil has fragmented public policies as a result of the lack of centrality in the process of strategic decision making

Consumer Acceptance and Willingness to Pay for Genetically Modified Rice in China: A Double Bounded Dichotomous Choic Contingent Valuation Survey Calibrated by Cheap Talk

Considering population growth, limitations on land and water resources, and contamination to the ecosystem due to agricultural activities, current rice production in China is facing pressure to fulfill national demand. Self-sufficiency of rice has been a long-held political objective of the Chinese government and it is national goal to maintain the equilibrium between the national production and consumption or even achieve a supply surplus in rice. With the developing bio-technology of genetic modification (GM), scientists believe that using genetically modified cultivars may ease the pressure mentioned above. However, both the government and the people are very cautious about large-scale cultivation and commercialization of GM rice and have concerns over public health, environmental safety, economic stability and other diverse impacts. The consumers\u27 acceptance, producers\u27 adoption of these new products, the political environment, and the cost benefit effectiveness of GM rice being commercialized has remained ambiguous within the constantly changing social media and political environment. The main objective of this thesis is to describe the political environment and perspectives of consumers to understand the barriers and controversies to accept and use GM rice by conducting research regarding consumers\u27 attitudes and their willingness to pay (WTP) for GM rice based on different information treatments. The other purpose of this study is to compare the results of this study with previous studies of Chinese consumers\u27 WTP and attitudes on GM rice and perform analyses based on economic, political, and social perspectives to provide contributions on future policy making. For this study a nation-wide survey was conducted where 1150 consumer respondents were randomly recruited of which 994 provided valid data. Geographically the survey sample pool covered twenty two main rice producing/consuming provinces of mainland China. A double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method was applied to estimate the consumers\u27 WTP. To reduce the hypothetical bias, cheap talk was applied as a calibration method. Results from the survey are used to develop a welfare analysis based on an econometric model simulation, to determine under different information treatments if there are significant differences in the WTP. This research contributes to the literature and policy decision making in regards to understanding the consumer barriers to and benefits from GM rice commercialization. Our results show that consumers\u27 WTP for GM rice is mainly negative: the total mean WTP for the entire sample was estimated to require an average 47% price discount for GM rice. This is a significant change from earlier studies (Lin, et al 2006). Science-based knowledge about GM rice benefits and risks need to be disseminated to China\u27s consumers to improve acceptance and successful commercialization. Key word: GM rice, China city consumers\u27 WTP, double bounded dichotomous choice, cheap tal